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The end of my university’s academic year is approaching, and I’ve undertaken a project (which I can’t discuss at the moment) that is going to fill a lot of my time during the summer. So….All About Work is taking a bit of a blogcation.

If I do post at all in the next little while, it will be on a very irregular basis. However, I will pop in regularly to make sure that everything is still functional. And I can still be reached through the Contact page on the blog, or on Twitter.

Thank you, regular and occasional readers, and see you soon!

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A lot of recent discussion about the labour force in Canada and elsewhere has focused on the “skills gap” – the alleged mismatch between workers’ skills and the abilities that employers need. One reason for the alleged gap is “digital disruption” – the automation or digitization of job tasks – which is changing how some jobs are done and thus changing the skills needed to successfully perform those jobs. These changes are so rapid that workers’ skills may quickly become outdated. Along similar lines, the Royal Bank of Canada recently released a report calling for post-secondary institutions to improve their graduates’ “human skills”, so as to better equip them for the parts of their future jobs that will involve working with people rather than with computers.

The narrative around the “skills gap” has mostly been controlled by employers and by the business community, and the business media have, generally, uncritically bought into the narrative. But the narrative is misleading in how it portrays the problem. It ignores (more…)

A recent discussion on Twitter raised some provocative points about communication norms in workplaces, especially those norms associated with gender. The research of linguists and sociologists such as Deborah Tannen has shown that men and women communicate differently, especially in the context of work. Men tend to present their views and opinions directly, while women tend to frame their statements with qualifiers such as “I think” or “in my opinion”.

In any workplace, the dominant group’s norms – both linguistic and behavioural – usually become (more…)

In January I made an unexpected trip to Edmonton, where I lived in the early ‘90s while I attended the University of Alberta. Some things have changed, some are the same – like -30C weather that time of year – and some have adapted, like the student newspaper the Gateway. When I was a U of A student the Gateway was a once-weekly newspaper, but it now posts most of its stories online, and the print version is a monthly magazine.

Harry Leslie Smith is just about to turn 95, which is an accomplishment in and of itself. But he has also given a tremendous gift to the world: his new book Don’t Let My Past Be Your Future.

His publishers were kind enough to provide me with a copy of the book. Ironically, the print copy they sent by post appears to have been lost by the Royal Mail – a organization that was publicly owned for almost 500 years before it was privatized, in the belief that the private sector is inherently more efficient than the public sector. That’s exactly the kind of flawed economic reasoning that Smith condemns – the “free market” logic that says competitive markets will result in superior products and services, and that says better government is less government.

The spread of that ideology has led to decreases in the amount and availability of state-supported services, such as publicly-funded health care and social assistance. By recounting his own history, Smith shows the very real improvements that those services can bring to individual lives and to the overall well-being of society. He also strongly makes the point that governments should work for the betterment of all, not just to help the rich become richer.

The #MeToo movement has generated a lot of discussion, not only around the numerous revelations of sexual misconduct, but also around what organizations can or should do to prevent those incidents from happening in the first place.

I have been in politics for more than 30 years…Over those years, I saw plenty of men behaving badly. It made me promise myself that I would do things differently should I ever get the chance to lead…Our Speaker was a woman, our government caucus chair was a woman and our Lieutenant-Governor was a woman. The two first female attorneys-general in BC history were appointed, Our 125,000+ civil service, finance ministry and largest Crown corporation were run by women, and more than a third of our government board appointees were women.

Appointing women to high-profile positions has a lot of symbolic value, and having women in those positions is certainly better than not having any women in power at all. But here’s the thing: (more…)

2018 is an Olympic year, and in my sport of figure skating, many countries are having their national championships right around now. These championships are stressful events in any year, but these ones will be even more stressful. The results of those championships go into choosing the skaters that will compete at the Olympics.

The skaters most likely to go to the Olympics tend to be the skaters that get the most media attention – but there are lots of other skaters competing at Nationals who also have wonderful stories. I’d like to introduce you to two of those skaters, because they represent what makes skating a truly great sport. (more…)